


Indefinite

by strangeallure



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Conduit Fic, F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29001366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure
Summary: Book smells good, warm and sleepy and a little salty. Human. Male.Maybe she has a type. Maybe it’s tall guys with soft eyes who want to be there for her.It's been several months since Michael landed in the future, and even as she can't forget Ash, she feels drawn to Book.
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler | Voq, Michael Burnham/Cleveland "Book" Booker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Indefinite

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write this since the season three trailer came out and cannot believe no one beat me to it.
> 
> Frangipani kept nagging me to write/finish this over the past months and also looked it over. Thank you!

Michael huffs impatiently, pushing one hand under the covers as she closes her eyes against residual light from the windows on Book’s ship. She’s been working all day, should be exhausted, fall asleep within seconds, but instead she feels wide awake.

In the beginning, she had managed to push the thought of Ash away, the wheels in her head turning too fast, the whirring spokes of them slicing up the images and memories of him so they couldn’t hurt her.

But once she'd settled into this new life, this time where he is not, where he’s been dead too long for anyone but her to even remember him, the thoughts return, crawling, slithering, pouncing. Unpredictable.

They’re in a shock of black hair at the Mercantile, they’re in the sight of a boat on a lake, they’re in the feeling of her own hands when she touches herself at night.

They, too, are, in the way Book looks at her sometimes, when she demonstrates her command of the technology on his ship, when she runs through his strategy sims in half the allotted time, when she starts using courier slang. And in the way he steers her by the arm or the small of her back, guiding her, communicating without words.

She misses Ash. She misses his voice and his words; misses his kindness and adoration; misses his eyes, his hands, his mouth. Michael’s never been very tactile _. That’s a lie. She hasn’t been tactile since she was ten, since Vulcan, since all the other things she doesn’t want to think about._ Ash had shown her how good it could be, to touch and to hold and be touched and held in turn; to press foreheads together, share kisses, intertwine bodies.

Michael’s wistful, sentimental, pressure building in her temples even as the fingers between her legs work to make her feel good. The thing is, she’s angry, too. So very angry. Because he didn’t come with her, because he stayed. He had invoked duty, the galaxy-forsaken concept she had built so much of her life around. And she had ignored the voice inside herself, young and screaming how he of all people could stay when so many of the crew – who had lives and families and friends beyond this damn ship – were about to leave everything behind so Michael wouldn’t have to face the future alone.

Duty, indeed. Making sure something like Control could never happen again. Taking on an impossible burden, one that would bend him into foreign shapes even if it didn’t break him. She’d understood that, or maybe she hadn’t, but it had triggered acquiescence, obedience. Duty first, always.

It makes her furious, bitter. She has been alone for so much of her life; she doesn’t want to be alone after making the biggest sacrifice of all. Martyring herself, as Georgiou put it.

The irony, of course, is that him standing by her, staying _with_ her, wouldn’t have changed anything about the here and now. He’d still be lost to her, along with everyone else on Discovery, with no way for her to know when or if they’d join her. It could take a minute, a month, ten years. Longer. The ship might have been torn apart for all she knows, forever lost in the timestream. She’s not ready to think about that, not ready for yet another burden wearing her down.

And he didn’t know that when he told her he wasn’t coming and then kissed her in a way she would never be able to shake. An indelible memory she has to live with, a reminder of what could have been.

Michael’s fingers work furiously as the pressure builds along with the anger, a fist in her gut that expands and expands with nowhere to go. When her orgasm hits, it’s perfunctory. Her muscles spasm and relax because that’s what they do. She moans to release the pressure because that’s what she does, but the release isn’t real. It’s there and not.

She stubbornly keeps rubbing at her clit, but she’s over-sensitized now and any theoretical relaxation a second orgasm could bring moves farther out of reach.

Instead, the supposed relief only adds to the buzzing beneath her skin, the itchiness. _Ash. Ash. Ash._ She doesn’t want to think about soft lips and softer eyes, about being held and being betrayed and how every time they kissed, it felt like they were trying to burrow into each other, like they were trying to meld together, merge their bodies into one.

It isn’t fair. Why isn’t anything ever fair, no matter how good she is, how hard she is trying?

Anger is building again, roiling in her gut, and her body reacts, grows taut, alert. Ready to fight.

It’s no use trying to sleep in this state. She rolls out of bed, puts her workout clothes on and hurries towards the holodeck. Book has a broad selection of martial arts training sims. Beating up generic baddies until her arms start bruising and her knuckles turn bloody sounds like a pretty good plan right about now.

\--

The door behind her hisses open just as Michael administers a fatal blow to opponent number three. At her win, the sim dissolves into nothing and she turns around.

Without the holo’s noises, there’s only the sound of her own panting breath in the small room, only the smell of her own sweat and a little bit of blood hanging in the air.

“Having some after-hours fun, I see,” Book says dryly.

“What are you doing here so late?” she asks, a little combative, maybe, and wipes her forehead with the bandages around her wrists.

“When someone tries to disengage the safety protocols on the holodeck, there’s a systems alert.” He shrugs, and only then does Michael notice that he’s barefoot, that his shirt is askew, like he pulled it on in a hurry. “And since I’m the captain, that ping goes to me.”

She gives him a look. “Might have more to do with you being the only crew member.”

The shake of his head is almost imperceptible. Instead of replying, he goes for a panel in the wall. “Let me patch you up,” he says as he gets out the medkit. When he turns towards her, he’s yawning, not bothering to cover his mouth, exposing his teeth.

“I can do it myself,” she says, maybe a little harshly, so she adds, “I’m sorry for waking you.” She means it, too.

“It’s alright.” He quickly fixes the broken skin on her hands and gives her whole body a pass with the tricorder. “No permanent damage,” he informs her. “You’d like to keep the bruises?”

“What?” Michael didn’t expect the question.

“Sometimes,” he says, unexpectedly earnest, “the bruises help. Something tangible, a little pain to ground you.” He holds up the tricorder with a wry smile. “Or maybe that’s just me.”

Book has the right to so many questions, so many answers, but he always leaves her be. She dug a room for herself inside his life without his permission – after he explicitly and repeatedly told her he didn’t want to know her, in fact – and yet he never makes her feel like a burden, or a curiosity.

He puts her to work, yes. She has to earn her keep as a courier-in-training, but Michael wouldn’t be able to live with his kindness any other way. His skin doesn’t glow around her, he doesn’t chant in an untranslatable language, and yet she thinks he can feel her, know her, connect to her on a deeper level of understanding. That he knows.

She gestures at him to put the medkit away. “Thank you,” she says, with clear eyes and bruised skin.

“No worries.”

And suddenly, he’s close, too close. Inside Michael’s personal space to the point where she has to look up to see his face. Only it’s her who has moved, not him. It’s her putting hands on his hips, moving her nose against his neck, millimeters from his skin, and taking a deep, indecent breath. He smells good, warm and sleepy and a little salty. Human. Male.

Maybe she has a type. Maybe it’s tall guys with soft eyes who want to be there for her.

She hasn’t touched another person in too long. Not outside of a fight, not skin-on-skin. Even Grudge the cat hasn’t warmed up to her enough to let Michael pet her.

Her last kiss, her last embrace, her last moment of tenderness.  _ Ash. Ash. Ash. _

Months and forever ago. Unrepeatable. Unreachable. Gone.

Michael’s not sure if she wants to recreate the memories or exorcise them. If she could ever truly let go. But she can’t stay stuck in the past either. Alone with her longing and her anger and her helplessness. Her blood starts thrumming, the tension in her muscles compelling her to move.

She has to get on the balls of her feet a little bit to fit her mouth against his, but not as much as she’s used to.

Part of her wants to pounce, grab his jaw and eat at his mouth, pretend like this is all instinct, like she has no say in the matter, is succumbing to baser urges. Another part of her doesn’t want that at all. So she’s gentle when she presses her lips to his, when she opens them ever-so-slightly. He swallows and she can feel it, knows that he didn’t expect this, but knows, too, that he’s been thinking about it. It’s a long, suspended moment that should feel uncertain, but the truth is that her show of restraint is a ritual or a courtesy or maybe an invitation. She never thought he’d deny her.

And then his hands come up to her shoulders and he starts kissing her back.

It’s soft and tender, and it takes her a few seconds to start comparing him to what she knows, what she misses so fiercely. He doesn’t smell quite right, his lips unfamiliar and his taste different. The way he holds her is not the same and even the press of his body is new, warmer, somehow, more solid.

Michael doesn’t want these thoughts. They’re no good, not for her or for him, not fair, but she can’t stop. And she doesn’t want to stop doing this. She can’t stop, not now, not when his presence and his touch make her feel alive in a way that doesn’t hurt, ground her more than any bruise. So she deepens the kiss, makes it messy and forceful, lets her hands roam and caress and press and knead. Everything to amplify what they’re doing, to make the signals of her body drown out her mind, get lost in sensation and stop, finally, finally, stop thinking.

Belatedly, she realizes that they’ve been moving, that Book is trying to maneuver them towards the door. She pulls away just enough to look at him, take in his hooded eyes and kiss-wet smile.

“Where are we going?” she says, and her voice comes out low.

“My quarters are closer,” he presses a quick kiss against her jaw, “but if you’d rather-“

She cuts him off with a real kiss, licking and biting into his mouth. “Here is good,” she whispers roughly. She doesn’t want him in her bed, doesn’t want to be in his. She doesn’t want the softness of the sheets and the comfort of the mattress. She wants something hard and fast and primal.

“Okay.” He lets her pull him under like a current, loses himself in her mouth and her jaw and her neck, his hands sliding under her shirt, rough thumbs against thin skin. “Okay.”

She pulls his shirt off and scrapes teeth over his collar bone, kisses down his chest, rubbing the side of her face against his nipple, breathing in his sleepy warmth as her tongue starts exploring a chest that’s too smooth, too hairless. Her hands go lower, get a hold of his sleep pants and underwear, start pushing both down.

He grabs one wrist to still her as he makes her look up at him with his other hand. “Michael,” he asks, breathing hard, “are you sure?”

She brushes her fingers against the underside of his belly, where there’s still no sign of hair, no trail for her to follow, and rotates her other wrist until he lets it go.

Michael makes herself catch his gaze. “I want this.” She can’t bring herself to say  _ I want you _ .

When she pushes his clothes all the way down, Book steps out of them willingly.

Michael discards her sweat-stained shirt and functional sports bra. “Let me have this.” It’s unfair to phrase it like that, to use her knowledge of his heart to sneak past his defenses.

“Okay,” he murmurs, kissing her pulse point before tugging her pants and underwear down, kneeling before her as he helps her out of her shoes and socks.

To Michael’s surprise, he doesn’t get up again, instead rubs his face against her thigh as his hands slide up to her ass, then curve over her hips.

He smiles up at her, eyes still hooded. “Can I eat you out?” he asks, and she didn’t expect him to be so blunt, but she likes it.

She positions herself against the wall, widening her stance and sliding down enough to give him better access. He shuffles over on his knees and tilts his head as he takes a look. “So nice,” he whispers it so low that Michael’s not even sure the words are for her. He traces her folds with one finger, “So, so nice,” before he leans in, his tongue taking the same path.

She lets her head fall back and closes her eyes. This is good, this can work.

Her hands find his neck and move up into his hair. His hands, his tongue, his lips, his breath, everything feels good, makes her feel good, makes little noises catch in her lungs, puff out of her mouth. 

It also feels wrong. 

His hair is lovely, like a resilient kind of cloud, but it’s too short and not silky enough. His neck feels different to her touch, just a little too wide, skin a little too smooth. She tries his shoulders, but they’re meatier than she’d like, a strength that appeals to her but that somehow feels improper, that too-smooth skin pulled tight across a little more muscle.

She curls her hands into loose fists, resting them on the shelf of his shoulders, trying to lose herself in the way her body responds, starts rolling against the face pressed high between her legs, sliding one of her palms up to her breasts, caressing herself, adding to the mounting sensation. It’s pleasure, it’s good, but it’s not quite right.

There’s no real beard to rub against her sensitive flesh. His fingers are a little too thick and even between her thighs she can feel that his skin is too smooth. He doesn’t press his nose into her clit when he laps at her entrance and his fingers inside of her thrust instead of circle.

She doesn’t mean to compare, to slip-slide between past and present, all she wants is to be in this moment, all she wants is to want only this, to be immersed in her own needs and urges. Instead, the differences make something prickle behind her eyes, make her afraid that she might see Ash behind her eyelids if she keeps them closed.

Book sucks her clit, hot and deep and with intent, until he elicits a deep, primal moan and more wetness, until her keyed-up body trashes, involuntary and scarcely containable, throwing him off, severing the connection. Michael takes the opportunity to grab at him and pull him up.

“Wha-“ he wants to ask, but she cuts him off with a kiss, tasting herself on his too-plush lips, inside his too-wide mouth.

“I need you inside of me.” Her voice is rougher than it should be, commanding.

“Okay,” he murmurs with his slick, pretty, wrong lips, hands finding her hips again.

And she realizes that she can’t do it like this, that she can’t see Book’s handsome, open face when they do this. So Michael turns in his grasp, puts her palms against the wall and pushes her ass back against him, into the hot hardness of his erection. It draws a long, guttural sound from him. “Like this.”

She and Ash only did it a few times – rare, precious times – and they always kissed until they were panting too hard to do more than press their open mouths together, always looked into each other’s eyes until they fell apart. This is new and better for it.

Michael won’t have to look and see. The angle will be completely new, might be enough to gloss over the differences.

Book kisses the nape of her neck and finds her entrance with the head of his cock, rubbing against the obscene amount of wetness there. He’s good with his mouth, she has to give him that. He’s good with so many other things, she remembers. He’s a good person, but that doesn’t matter now.

“Ready?” he murmurs into her skin.

“Yes,” she hisses. “Please.”

He slides in slow and deliberate, one continuous, gradual movement that gives her time to adjust, like Ash might have done. And, fuck, it’s good. It does feel different, yes, but it still feels right, somehow, to be filled again, to be connected to another human in this timeless, primal way.

One of his hands slides between her body and the wall, cupping her breast, rubbing it gently to get her nipple hard. The other hand has a firm grip on her hip, encouraging Michael to stand as tall as she can. She starts rolling her hips, letting small whimpers fall from her mouth. He follows her lead, starts moving inside of her and, fuck, it’s fantastic, the easy slide proving how wet she is, how much her body wants this, has been waiting for it. 

He pushes deeper on the downstroke, harder, and she keens low in her throat, thinking of the first time Ash had tilted her hips up beneath him to get in deeper, fill her even more. How she had pulled up her legs, how she had grabbed at him to get him closer, everything to make more of their bodies touch, to pull him inside of her, intoxicated by this feeling of deep belonging, the way he was looking at her like she was everything, like she was enough, like nothing else mattered. And his mouth, his amazing, beautiful mouth, kissing her slow and deep and perfect until she was dizzy with it but couldn’t stop, panting and breathing hard through her nose, unwilling to pull away, her hand in his thick, soft hair keeping him close as she ate all the delicious sounds he made from his mouth.

Book’s sounds are pretty, too, a bit rougher, more strained, but good, delicious in their own way. Michael likes how he bites them into the flesh of her neck and shoulder, getting her spit-wet, how he pants them against the pounding of her pulse and the whorls of her ear. And his cock. Fuck, it’s so good. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t even tell it’s him. She could pretend that it’s Ash inside of her, beautiful and tall and always on the verge of breaking. She could pretend that the sounds are Book watching them, touching himself to the ways they give each other pleasure.

The feel of his mouth threatens the illusion, too soft and too big, as does the way he touches her breast. It doesn’t help that he uses his thumb on her nipple instead of two fingers.

Michael’s glad she doesn’t have to see him, even if part of her wants to. She knows she would enjoy it, knows he will be so devastatingly beautiful when he gets to come inside of her, but she can’t do that to Ash, she can’t let herself have that memory, can’t risk having the image of it rise in her mind when she touches herself.  _ Ash. Ash. Ash. _ Why isn’t he here, why isn’t he the one filling her up, making her feel good? Why didn’t he choose her?

She wants to cry or scream or sob, but instead she thrusts her hips back harder, urging Book on, using the leverage of one forearm against the wall as her hand slides down towards her clit. She needs to come, she needs to drown out these thoughts with unbridled pleasure.

When she slides down as much as possible, it makes Book stumble back. He quickly catches on as she moves faster and faster against him, follows her lead, taking her hips in his strong hands to thrust harder and harder and harder. She’s sweaty and panting, loud and shameless as he fucks her like animals do, as she takes it, greedy and selfish, rutting between his cock and her own hand as she chases her release.

Ash never fucked her like this. It was always more than this.

But maybe with Book, this can be enough, she tells herself. Maybe that’s all he wants or at least all he needs, she tells herself, discounting the way he looks at her sometimes, discounting what she knows in her useless heart.

“Yes,” she groans, moans, pants, “yes, yes, yes,” as she comes, frantic and twitching, thoughts scrambling, eyes squeezing tight until everything fractures. She keeps rubbing her clit through it, keeps clenching around his cock that’s still working inside her, still connecting them, still feeling good and right and too much.

Michael’s no empath, wouldn’t even trust herself to know her own feelings, but there’s this one drop of absolute clarity telling her what he needs.

“Book, please,” it comes out in a long, painful whine, high with yearning that might be for him one day, “I need you.”

She’s overheated and sweaty, but when he digs his fingers into her flesh, thrusting hard to come as deep inside of her as he can get, she’s not sure she’s ever felt better.

Once the tiny shocks wrecking his body subside, he slips from her, pulling her back against his chest, pressing parched kisses into the nape of her neck. Her legs feel weak and her bones feel heavy, but Book holds her close, keeps her steady. 

“I’m here, Michael,” he whispers over and over. “I’m right here.”


End file.
